Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Bansie Vasvani reviews Picturing Power at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York City

Yee I-Lann’s solo exhibition Picturing Power at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York, is an emphatic act of subversion. Her black-and-white photomontages, made from two centuries of archival images of the Dutch and British colonization of Malaysia, present a reengagement with reality through a new language of alterity. For Yee, the exposure and visibility of the past create a vocabulary that focuses on emancipation and justice.

In Picturing Power: Wherein one surreptitiously performs reconnaissance to collect views and freeze points of view to be reflective of one’s own kind (2013), shrouded black figures posed as 19th-century photographers are juxtaposed with a comic scene of colonizers standing below large, overturned tables. Set against a stark white background, these incongruous figures symbolize colonial suppression. In Yee’s work, recurring images of tables represent transactions, power, and control. The inversion of these objects becomes a strong metaphor for the reversion of power from centuries of repression. More importantly, the dark, haunting, ghost-like figures appear to be voyeurs looking into the past and upending memories of hard times and the subjugation of the colonized. Here the artist’s language demands a heightened level of representation that is both humorous and a clearly articulated negative critique.

Read More »

Mel Chin’s Rematch, now on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art, is the artist’s first retrospective, long overdue and particularly prescient this week as a new U.N. report highlights the dire conditions of the Earth created by pollution, energy, and population, among other factors. Chin, while making visually stunning work, strives to create environmental reactions, rather than objects. However, reactions can have effects outside of the artist’s control. For example, Operation Paydirt (2006–ongoing) has the ambitious and specific goal for “New Orleans to become a place where no child will ever be threatened by lead in soil, and a city capable of rescuing other cities by setting an example.”[1] The outcomes that Chin creates, intended or unintended, are the actual artistic output of this precocious artist, rather than the traditional objects one finds in the museum.

Mel Chin. Safehouse, 2008-2001; Saint Roch neighborhood, New Orleans. Photo by Mel Chin.

Operation Paydirt is an attempt to design and innovate a replicable solution to the problem of lead poisoning, which is prevalent throughout New Orleans, especially in poorer areas. Caused by lead in the soil (from gasoline, paint, and other emissions), there is a growing body of research linking lead exposure in childhood with a host of problems later in life, including juvenile delinquency, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities. Though originally a native of Houston, Texas, Chin first became intimate with New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction and the Federal Levee Failure. “…When I got here I was not even remotely prepared for the level of devastation I encountered. Even months later, I felt a sense of inadequacy. It was like, how do you do something on this scale? I became obsessed, coming back again and again, to try to come up with a project of equivalent magnitude.”[2] Chin, with the help of scientists, posited a procedure dubbed “T.L.C.” or Treat, Lock, and Cover, that could be a possible solution to lead poisoning. Using an organic phosphate mixture made partially of fish bones, this substance binds the lead and renders it harmless.

Read More »

Night Gallery’s current five-artist exhibition, International Women’s Day, celebrates the holiday by focusing on the legacy of one woman artist in particular, Camille Claudel. Although an accomplished sculptor on her own, she was often overshadowed by her mentor and lover Auguste Rodin, and after suffering a breakdown and destroying much of her work, she spent the last thirty years of her life in an asylum. International Women’s Day features contemporary artists “working to continue Claudel’s legacy of sculptural production with an awareness of itself as a narrative object: the narrative being both the material story of the object’s making and its corroboration of the artists’ existence.”

David Armstrong Six. Imposter, 2013; plaster, steel, wood, ceramic, paint; 87 x 21 x 37 in. Courtesy of Night Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson.

The artist whose work shares the closest aesthetic affinities with the early modern sculpture of Claudel is David Armstrong Six. His multimedia sculptures are composed of rough-hewn pieces of plaster, wood, metal, and paint. They are abstract stand-ins for lone figures, junkyard Giacomettis whose heavily textured surfaces keep us moving around them to apprehend all the elements and discern how they relate to the whole. The insertion of recognizable objects—a maraca and plaster eggplant into one piece (Radio, 2014), or a polished wooden phallus in another (Imposter, 2013)—provides a counterweight to the formalism of the works, proclaiming them as objects in the real world.

Read More »

Today we bring you an article from our archives in celebration of The Brooklyn Rail’s most recent issue, which includes essays by contemporary craft luminaries Namita Wiggers and Glenn Adamson. As Lowery Stokes Sims notes in her excellent editorial essay, “If the notion of ‘diversity’ suggests the fostering of a variety of expressions on an equal footing, then in the visual arts our scrutiny would have to be directed toward the situation of craft. Despite a more pervasive adoption of craft techniques and materials into the so-called fine arts in contemporary practice, there is a divide between craft/art that is still stubborn. Sometimes cast as ‘heart’ versus ‘intellect,’ or ‘hand’ versus ‘mind,’ or ‘skill’ versus ‘concept,’ these dichotomous oppositions all serve to segregate the different aspects of physical functioning in the creation of art objects that should be considered together. Given the often loaded nuances of these words, and considering how vocabularies are enlisted by various professions, we also have to read issues of class, and at times ethnic culture and gender, into the dialogue around craft.” The article below, Hayley Plack‘s review of the 40 Under 40: Craft Futures exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, was originally published on December 13, 2012.

Installation view, 40 Under 40: Craft Futures, Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery, July 20, 2012–February 3, 2013.

What defines the art of craft? What is the difference between art and craft? 40 Under 40: Craft Futures at Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery blurred the lines for me, while at the same time helping me to appreciate craft in a new light. There is something about the word “craft” that connotes antiquated techniques that don’t necessarily relate to our contemporary world. This exhibition breathes new life into the art of craft and highlights the contemporary relevance of craftsmanship.

In celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Renwick Gallery, the exhibition features the work of forty artists born since 1972—the year the Smithsonian Art Museum established its contemporary craft and decorative-arts program. All of the works were created since September 11, 2011, drawing particular attention to the state of contemporary craft and the way it relates to our society. Although we often associate craft with functionality or pure aesthetics, the pieces in this exhibition have more profound stories to tell in much the same way as contemporary art.  The show explores issues of technology, technique, relevance, and even the current economic climate as it relates to craft. Christy Oates fuses traditional woodworking techniques with CAD software technology to make furniture, while Joshua DeMonte creates jewelry using digital fabrication, both examples of how new technologies are changing the nature of craft. Several artists highlight the importance of sustainability, exemplified by Jeff Garner’s sustainable clothing designs and Uhuru’s furniture made from reclaimed materials.

Read More »

From our partners at Art Practical, today we bring you a review of Sarah Christianson‘s When the Landscape Is Quiet Again: North Dakota’s Oil Boom at SF Camerawork. Author Larissa Archer notes, “Christianson doesn’t try to appeal to emotions with her photographs. They encourage a process by which the viewer mentally forms a bridge between the damning information about the subjects (here, provided by the captions) and the seeming neutrality of the scenes themselves, rendering the personal and ecological tragedies conveyed so much greater than an appeal to sight alone.” This review was originally published on March 19, 2014.

Sarah Christianson. Corn field, Antler, ND, September 2013, 2013. C-print, 20 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.

No single photograph in Sarah Christianson’s When the Landscape Is Quiet Again: North Dakota’s Oil Boom gets one’s blood boiling. Her images of her home state—which has, in several booms since the early ’50s, changed from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial one based around oil extraction—elicit a slower-burning experience of rage. Rather than focusing on obvious signs of destruction, Christianson’s photographs (paired here with generously informative captions) collectively emphasize the insidiousness of the waste and danger that are often hiding in plain sight.

Read the full article here.

The circulation of images from Sarah Lucas’ Nud Nob, now at Gladstone Gallery, on social media and elsewhere seems bound to be both blessing and curse. On the one hand, shots of enormous concrete penises resting on crushed automobiles, or a series of floor-to-ceiling photographs of a woman consuming a banana, really propagate themselves, which makes for great publicity. But those who encounter these images are perhaps too likely to write off the show as one of cheeky spectacle—of another British punk artist banking on humor instead of substance—when this is not the case.

Sarah Lucas. Chicken Knickers, 2014; digitally printed wallpaper. Photo: David Regen. Copyright Sarah Lucas. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

Sure, Lucas’ work is humorous, but to summarize her objects as mere “dirty jokes” is simply wrong. At the gallery, a pattern of viewer behavior quickly becomes obvious: Amusement gives way to discomfort, followed by a quickened shuffle through the remaining rooms and back out the door. The fact that the phallus—a privileged object in artistic representation since antiquity—still has such a powerful effect on people is evidence enough that the subject has not been exhausted; that there are still significances for art to tease out. In the words of Frank T.J. Mackie, “respect the cock.” Lucas seems to winkingly agree. Read More »

Considered a prophet of the digital age, video artist Ryan Trecartin transforms contemporary culture’s addiction to the internet and obsession with technological devices into a violently exuberant visual orgy. Watching his work feels like riding a roller coaster into the vertiginous depths of the Web or looking through a kaleidoscope on acid; it is an experience of hysterical nonlinearity, relentless mutation, and extreme visual and verbal cacophony. On March 25, 2014, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) premiered the four newest additions to Trecartin’s adrenalized oeuvre—Junior War (2013), Comma Boat (2013), CENTER JENNY (2013), and Item Falls (2013)—at the Bing Theater. The nature of this viewing experience was particularly well suited to the content and conception of the works themselves; though each piece can stand alone, they are all part of a larger project, connected by repeated thematic and visual tropes and therefore most effectively watched consecutively and without interruption. Trecartin is insistent on the classification of his creations as “movies,” and seeing them on the big screen complements and magnifies their sensory intensity.

Ryan Trecartin. Junior War, 2013; video still; HD video; 24:08. Courtesy of The New Inquiry, New York.

The first work, Junior War, consists of repurposed footage shot during the artist’s senior year of high school in Ohio. Inspired by The Blair Witch Project (1999), Trecartin used a Handycam with a night-vision lens to film the euphoric vandalism that occurred during the bacchanalian ritual of Senior-Junior War, which is exactly what it sounds like: classes battling each other in a series of drunken misdemeanors. The footage is edited with Trecartin’s signature freneticism, and as we are jarringly bounced between the greenish frames, an ominous bass line increasingly hints at the approach of an impending catastrophe. But this never materializes, and much of the destruction we witness is either futile (kids repeatedly bang on metal mailboxes that just won’t break) or funny (television sets get thrown out of car windows and shatter on the sidewalk amid the laughter of boisterous, intoxicated perpetrators). The film is a quasi-anthropological investigation into the unleashing of human nature’s animalistic side (destruction as a creative act is a recurrent theme in Trecartin’s work) and how the presence of the camera, right before the era of ubiquitous self-documentation on social-media platforms, affects the behavior of these teenagers.

Read More »